“The wax-works of Westminster Abbey have not been seen by many people, but are deservedly famous. At first, it was customary when a king or any other great personage was to be buried, to place on the coffin his effigy formed of boiled leather. When the art of modelling in cuir bouilli was lost, wax was employed for making the image, and wax, notwithstanding its proverbial pliancy, is a very enduring substance. From the north aisle of the apse we ascend a narrow staircase, passing by the way some of the most beautiful sculpture in the Abbey fronting the chapel of Abbot Islip. At a turn in the stair which leads to a kind of upper gallery we are suddenly confronted with the lifelike figure of King Charles II., whose face, as rendered familiar by numerous and contemporary engravings, with its black eyes and swarthy complexion, looks out from behind the glass of a cupboard only a few inches from the spot we have reached. The royal figure is dressed in crimson velvet, now sadly browned, and adorned

with the finest lace of the period. When we have recovered composure and breath, and can look around, we find ourselves in the presence of a series of most interesting and curious portraits. The wooden presses, with glass fronts, are, to judge from the pattern of the hinges, of about the time of the monarch whose effigy was the first to confront us. The rest, taken chronologically, consist of ten figures beginning with Queen Elizabeth and ending with Lord Nelson, but neither of these, the first and last, were really funeral effigies.”—(W. J. L.)

“At the entrance to the chapel we are brought to what Dean Stanley calls a ‘solemn architectural pause.’ Here we may study three distinct architectural periods. ‘First,’ as Mr. Loftie says, ‘there is the early work of Henry III., who, it will be remembered, made a Lady-Chapel here before he recommenced the rebuilding of the Confessor’s church. Secondly, the next pier shows us the work done when the body of Henry V. was brought hither from France in 1422. Lastly, alongside of these two is the first column of the new and gorgeous structure with which Henry VII. replaced the Lady-Chapel of Henry III.’ The dimness of the approach materially enhances the effect of the superb building beyond, and it cannot be doubted that this comparative gloom, so far from being an accident, was deliberately intended. The building of the chapel occupied the first twelve years of the Sixteenth Century. It measures inside 104 feet 6 inches long by 69 feet 10 inches broad, and consists of a nave and aisles of four bays, the nave terminating in five small polygonal chapels, the style throughout being Perpendicular. The entrance is under a large central and two smaller side arches, which have six bronze doors of superb design and splendid workmanship, in which a number of Henry VII.’s devices appear.”—(C. H.)

“I stood before the entrance to Henry the Seventh’s Chapel. A flight of steps leads up to it, through a deep and gloomy, but magnificent arch. Great gates of brass, rich and delicately wrought, turn heavily upon their hinges, as if proudly reluctant to admit the feet of common mortals into this most gorgeous of sepulchres.

“On entering, the eye is astonished by the pomp of architecture and the elaborate beauty of sculptured detail. The very walls are wrought into universal ornament, encrusted with tracery and scooped into niches, crowded with the statues of saints and martyrs. Stone seems, by the cunning labour of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft, as if by magic, and the fretted roof achieved with the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb.

“Along the sides of the chapel are the lofty stalls of the Knights of the Bath, richly carved of oak, though with the grotesque decorations of Gothic architecture. On the pinnacles of the stalls are affixed the helmets and crests of the knights with their scarfs and swords; and above them are suspended their banners, emblazoned with armorial bearings, and contrasting the splendour of gold and purple and crimson, with the cold grey fretwork of the roof. In the midst of this grand mausoleum stands the sepulchre of its founder,—his effigy, with that of his queen, extended on a sumptuous tomb, and the whole surrounded by a superbly wrought brazen railing.

“There is a sad dreariness in this magnificence; this strange mixture of tombs and trophies; these emblems of living and aspiring ambition, close beside mementoes which show the dust and oblivion in which all must sooner or later terminate.

“Two small aisles on each side of this chapel present a touching instance of the equality of the grave, which brings down the oppressor to a level with the oppressed, and mingles the dust of the bitterest enemies together. In one is the sepulchre of the haughty Elizabeth; in the other is that of her victim, the lovely and unfortunate Mary. Not an hour in the day but some ejaculation of pity is uttered over the fate of the latter, mingled with indignation at her oppressor. The walls of Elizabeth’s sepulchre continually echo with the sighs of sympathy heaved at the grave of her rival.

“A peculiar melancholy reigns over the aisle where Mary lies buried. The light struggles dimly through windows darkened by dust. The greater part of the place is in deep shadow, and the walls are stained and tinted by time and weather. A marble figure of Mary is stretched upon the tomb, round which is an iron railing much corroded, bearing her national emblem—the thistle.”

“It was to be his chantry as well as his tomb, for he was determined not to be behind the Lancastrian princes in devotion; and this unusual anxiety for the sake of a soul not too heavenward in its affections expended itself in the immense apparatus of service which he provided. Almost a second Abbey was needed to contain the new establishment of monks who were to sing in their stalls ‘as long as the world shall endure.’ Almost a second shrine surrounded by its blazing tapers and shining like gold with its glittering bronze, was to contain his remains.

“To the Virgin Mary, to whom the chapel was dedicated, he had a special devotion. Her ‘in all his necessities he had made his continual refuge’; and her figure, accordingly, looks down upon his grave from the east end, between the apostolic patrons of the Abbey, Peter and Paul, with ‘the holy company of heaven—that is to say, angels, archangels, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors and virgins,’ to ‘whose singular mediation and prayers he also trusted,’ including the royal saints of Britain, St. Edward, St. Edmund, St. Oswald, St. Margaret of Scotland, who stand, as he directed, sculptured tier above tier, on every side of the Chapel; some retained from the ancient Lady-Chapel; the greater part of the work of his own age. Around his tomb stand his ‘accustomed Avours or guardian saints to whom he calls and cries’—St. Michael, St. John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist, St. George, St. Anthony, St. Edward, St. Vincent, St. Anne, St. Mary Magdalene and St. Barbara, each with their peculiar emblems—‘so to aid, succour and defend him, that the ancient and ghostly enemy, nor none other evil or damnable spirit, have no power to invade him, nor with their wickedness to annoy him, but with holy prayers to be intercessors to his Maker and Redeemer.’ These were the adjurations of the last Mediæval King, as the Chapel was the climax of the latest Mediæval architecture.”

“But although the Chapel hangs on tenaciously to the skirts of the ancient Abbey and the ancient Church, yet that solemn architectural pause between the two—which arrests the most careless observer, and renders it a separate structure, a foundation ‘adjoining the Abbey,’ rather than forming part of it—corresponds with marvellous fidelity to the pause and break in English history of which Henry VII.’s reign is the expression. It is the close of the Middle Ages: the apple of Granada in its ornaments shows that the last Crusade was over; its flowing draperies and classical attributes indicate that the Renaissance had already begun. It is the end of the Wars of the Roses combining Henry’s right of conquest with his fragile claim of hereditary descent. On the one hand, it is a glorification of the victory of Bosworth. The angels at the four corners of the tomb, held or hold the likeness of the crown which he won on that famous day. In the stained glass we see the same crown hanging on the green bush in the fields of Leicestershire. On the other hand, like the Chapel of King’s College at Cambridge, it asserts everywhere the memory of the ‘holy Henry’s shade’; the Red Rose of Lancaster appears in every pane of glass: in every corner is the Portcullis—the Alters securitas, as he termed it, with an allusion to its own meaning, and the double safeguard of his succession—which he derived through John of Gaunt from the Beaufort Castle in Anjou inherited from Blanche of Navarre by Edmund Crouchback; whilst Edward IV. and Elizabeth of York are commemorated by intertwining these Lancastrian symbols with the Greyhound of Cecilia Neville, wife of Richard, Duke of York, with the Rose in the Sun, which scattered the mist at Barnet, and the Falcon on the Fetterlock, by which the first Duke of York expressed to his descendants that ‘he was locked up from the hope of the kingdom, but advising them to be quiet and silent, as God knoweth what may come to pass.’

“It is also the revival of the ancient Celtic-British

element in the English monarchy, after centuries of eclipse. It is a strange and striking thought, as we mount the steps of Henry VII.’s Chapel, that we enter there a mausoleum of princes, whose boast it was to be descended not from the Confessor or the Conqueror, but from Arthur and Llewellyn; and that roundabout the tomb, side by side with the emblems of the great English Houses, is to be seen the Red Dragon of the last British King Cadwallader—‘the dragon of the great Pendragonship,’ of Wales, thrust forward by the Tudor King in every direction, to supplant the hated White Boar of his departed enemy—the fulfilment, in another sense than the old Welsh bards had dreamt, of their prediction that the progeny of Cadwallader should reign again.”—(A. P. S.)

“We now enter Henry VII.’s Chapel, the most perfect example of the Perpendicular style at its best in the country. At the entrance are beautiful bronze doors covered with designs symbolical of the titles of the Royal founder. It is impossible to describe in words the richness and beauty of the interior of this noble chapel. The vault is very beautiful with fan-tracery. The banners of the Knights of the Order of the Bath hang over their stalls. The misereres are wonderfully carved, and are worthy of close examination. The black marble tomb of the founder is considered to be the best example of the Renaissance style in England. It was fashioned by Torregiano. Very numerous monuments are found here. The tombs of Mary Queen of Scots and of Queen Elizabeth have especial interest. Oliver Cromwell’s body once lay in the most eastern chapel, but the Royalists at the Restoration wrought vengeance on his corpse, and on that of other regicides, and did not suffer them to remain in these hallowed precincts.”—(P. H. D.)

“The Chapter-House is visited by comparatively few of the myriads who come to the Abbey; but those who know what to look for may well linger for some time in this deeply interesting building. The splendour and loveliness of the entrance to it show the important place which it held in the general estimation; the stones under the left arcade of the vestibule are still deeply worn by the feet of generations of monks, as they walked two and two to their weekly assemblies. The vaulting and its bosses are quaint and rich. The quaint entrance door itself, bleared and ruined as it now is, was once rich with gold and scarlet.

“Entering the Chapter-House we see at a glance an octagon of the noblest proportions, of which the roof is supported by a slender and graceful pillar of polished Purbeck, thirty-five feet high, ‘surrounded by eight subordinate shafts, attached to it by three moulded bands.’ The painted windows were placed there as a memorial to Dean Stanley. One was given by the Queen, and one by Americans. In the central light at the summit of each is represented the greatest man of each century—the Venerable Bede, St. Anselm, Roger Bacon, Chaucer, Caxton and Shakespeare. In the window over the door is Queen Victoria. The central band of the windows represents many of the great historical events connected with the Abbey.”—(F. W. F.)

“The Chapel of the Pyx is approached from the East Cloister Walk by a massive door with seven locks. It is beneath the old dormitory and occupies two bays of the Confessor’s building, and, historically considered, is perhaps the most interesting portion of the Abbey buildings. The pyx is a box containing the standard pieces of gold and silver coin of the realm which were used for testing the accuracy of the currency. It has now been removed to the Mint, where the trial of the pyx takes place.”—(C. H.)